Time’s Person of the Year: Barack Obama

[1]President Barack Obama, coming off a successful reelection campaign, has been named Time‘s 2012 Person of the Year[2].

Obama won the award for his successful 2012 campaign and for creating a new electoral coalition, Time noted. Obama’s reelection last month over Republican challenger Mitt Romney drew attention to the new ways that groups as diverse as women, minorities and the college-educated could find ways to work — and vote — as a group.

In its profile, Time detailed the effort that Obama and his campaign team put into reworking their electoral strategy for the 2012 election. Obama could no longer count on the idealism and faith that marked his 2008 campaign and it’s theme of “Hope and Change.”

With a record to run on, and to be attacked on, the Obama team needed to develop a strategy and a coalition that could overcome depressed poll numbers and lowered expectations in the wake of ongoing wars and the financial crisis.

This is the second time Obama has won this award. He also received it in 2008 following his first victorious presidential campaign.